
iiiiii-;!^ . ,, : ;':!iiii!!liilfiiiiiiil;:!iiim 

liililliiiilliillliiitiii 



! ! 




Class. 
BooL 






'" '^ 57sa 



1^4 



Gop}iiglit>?L 



! ' ! / 



COPXRIGHT DEPOSm 



RETROGRESSION AND OTHER 
POEMS 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 



THE POEMS OF WILLIAM WATSON. Selected and 

arranged by J. A. Spender, with Portrait and many New 

Poems. 2 vols. Crown 8vo. $2.50 net. 
SELECTED POEMS. Fcap. 8vo. Cloth $1.25 net. 
THE MUSE IN EXILE. Crown 8vo. Cloth $1.25 net. 
THE PRINCE'S QUEST, AND OTHER POEMS. Fcap. 

8vo. $1.30 net. 
THE ELOPING ANGELS: a Caprice. Square 16mo. 

$1.25 net. 
ODES AND OTHER POEMS. Fcap. 8vo. $1.30 net. 
THE FATHER OF THE FOREST, AND OTHER POEMS. 

With Photogravure Portrait of the Author. Fcap. 8vo. 

$1.25 net. 
THE PURPLE EAST: a Series of Sonnets. With a 

Frontispiece after G. F. Watts, R.A. Fcap. 8vo. Wrapper 

50 cents net. 
THE YEAR OF SHAME. With an introduction by the 

Bishop of Hereford. Fcap. 8vo. $1.00 net. 
THE HOPE OF THE WORLD, AND OTHER POEMS. 

Fcap. 8vo. $1.25 net. 
EXCURSIONS IN CRITICISM: being some Prose Rec- 
reations of a Rhymer. Crown 8vo. $1.50 net. 
ODE ON THE DAY OF THE CORONATION OF KING 

EDWARD VII. Small 4to. $1.00 net. 
FOR ENGLAND: Poems written during Estrange- 
ment. Fcap. 8vo. $1.00 net. 
NEW POEMS. Crown 8vo. Second Edition. $1.50 net. 
THE HERALDS OF THE DAWN. Crown 8vo. $1.25 net. 
SABLE AND PURPLE. WITH OTHER POEMS. Crown 

8vo. Cloth, $1.25 net. 
THE TOMB OF BURNS. With 9 Illustrations by D. L. 

Cameron. Demy 16mo. Leather and Cloth. 
WORDSWORTH'S GRAVE. With Illustrations by 

Donald Maxwell. Demy IRmo. Leather and Cloth. 
PENCRAFT: A Plea for the Older Ways. Crown 8vo. 

$1.00 net. 



NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY 
LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD 



RETROGRESSION 
AND OTHER POEMS 

BY WILLIAM WATSON 



NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY 

LONDON : JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD 

MCMXVII 






Copyright, 191 7, 
By John Lane Company 



Press of 

J. J. Little & Ives Company 

New York. U. S. A. 






m \7\o,r/ 



ICI,A455196 



:> 



NOTE 

The contents of this volume now make their 
appearance for the first time, with the exception 
of six short pieces. Of these, two have been 
published in the Nation, two in the Evening 
News, one in Nature, one in the Cornhill 
Magazine. The author tenders his thanks to 
the editors of those journals and periodicals for 
permission to reprint the poems referred to. 



CONTENTS 

I 

POEMS OF THE LITERARY LIFE 

PAGE 

Retrogression 13 

The Mossgrown Porches 19 

The Sexes of Song 21 

The Husbandman of Heaven 22 

Shakespeare 24 

Tradition in Art and Letters 25 

Nature's Way 26 

On a Caroline Poet 29 

Art's Riddle 30 

To A Strenuous Critic 31 

To 32 

To A Literary Cleric 33 

The Ballad of the Bootmaker 34 

The Giants and the Elves 38 

The Yapping Cur 39 

The Surprise 41 

On a Too Prolific Essayist 42 

7 



8 CONTENTS 

"' PAGE 

Staggerall ..... 43 

The Adjective 44 

Who Can Tell? 45 

Mastery 46 

The Difference 49 

Thomas Hood 50 

Confidence 52 

On Milton's Use of the Sonnet 54 

A Wise Precept 55 

Over-Vigilance 56 

To A Skilled Versemaker 57 

On a People's Poet 58 

On a Deceased Author 59 

Loves and Hates 60 

The Wizard's Wand 61 

To A Vintner of Parnassus 62 

Coke upon Littleton 63 

II 

POEMS PERSONAL AND GENERAL 

The Eternal Search 67 

Rapture 68 

To a Violoncello 70 

Her Third Birthday 71 

Disclosure 73 

Edenhunger 75 



CONTENTS 9 

PAGE 

The Better Choice 77 

To My Eldest Child 78 

To THE Hon. Stephen Coleridge on His Labours in 
Mitigation of Animal Suffering . . . .81 

An Insoluble Problem 83 

On a Little Gift to a Little Child ..... 84 

The Prodigy — 1915 85 

Uninhabited 87 

Valedictory 88 

To a Successful Man 89 

What Science Says to Truth 90 

The Peer's Progress 91 

A Familiar Epistle 94 



POEMS OF THE LITERARY 
LIFE 



RETROGRESSION 

Our daughters flower in vernal grace ; 

In strength our striplings wax apace; 

Our cities teem; our commerce rides 

Sovereign upon the fawning tides. 

But while, to this our stronghold — where 

The North Wind's wandering children fair, 

Like wild birds from the waters sprung, 

Built their wild nest and reared their young — 

The fleets of peace for ever pour 

Fruitage and vintage, gems and ore; 

While here, within each ocean gate, 

Long barricadoed against Fate, 

We are served by all the alien seas, 
13 



14 RETROGRESSION 

And fed from the Antipodes, 
Lo, everywhere the unplenished brain ! 
Everywhere, dire as bondman's chain, 
Or laws that crush, or creeds that blind, 
The leanness of the unnourished mind. 

For few and fewer do they grow, 
Who know, or ever cared to know. 
The great things greatly said and sung 
In this heroic English tongue. 
This craggy speech, the rough-wrought key 
To palaces of wizardry, 
Our fathers' glory, and our despair ; 
And many a fabric hung in air. 
That firmer stands than boastful stone ; 
And many a tower of vigil lone. 
Whence Wisdom sees, beneath her curled, 
The involved, inextricable world. 



RETROGRESSION 15 

And shouldst thou have in thee to-day 
Aught thou canst better sing than say, 
Shun, if thou wouldst by men be heard. 
The comely phrase, the wellborn word, 
And use, as for their ears more meet, 
The loose-lipped lingo of the street, 
A language Milton's kin have long 
Accounted good enough for song. 
Or don that vesture not less vile. 
The beaded and bespangled style — 
Diction o'erloaded and impure, 
Thy thought lost in its garniture. 
Till this itself becomes the goal. 
The alpha, omega, and whole ; 
Thy Muse, ev'n to her raiment's hem, 
Huddling uncostly gem on gem, 
Striving her lax form to bestar 



l6 RETROGRESSION 

With all crude ornaments that are ; 
An empty and a dreary strife, 
Vulgar in Letters as in Life. 

Nor look for praise, save here and there 
From a fast-dwindling remnant rare, 
If thou beget with happy pain 
The ordered and the governed strain 
That peradventure had not shamed 
Masters felicitously famed; 
Dryden, the athlete large and strong, 
Lord of the nerve and sinew of song; 
The easeful victor, w^ho subdued 
Till conquest was but habitude; 
A hewer and shaper who could see 
In adamant plasticity; 
Who tore from the entrails of the mine 
The metal of his iron line — 



RETROGRESSION vj 

Iron that oft all molten rolled, 
Heaved to a billow, and crashed to gold ; 
Who, born beside the haughty tomb 
Of that rank time of overbloom 
When poets vied in gathering each 
Full-blossomed apple and buxom peach 
That odorous in the orchard burned, 
Had, from their purple surfeit, learned 
The truth in Hellas seen so plain, 
That the art of arts is to refrain; — 
Or Gray, who on worn thoughts conferred 
That second youth, the perfect word, 
The elected and predestined phrase 
That had lain bound, long nights and days, 
To wear at last, when once set free. 
Immortal pellucidity; 
And who, in that most mighty Ode, 



i8 RETROGRESSION 

That like a pageant streamed and glowed, 
Called up anew mid breathing things 
The great ghosts of our tragic Kings, 
With doom-dark brows to come and go, 
Trailing the folds of gorgeous woe. 



THE MOSSGROWN PORCHES 

When, as of old in Rome's imperial world, 
Fair, conquered gods are from their temples hurled, 
And some rude, vehement Peter puts to flight 
Some serene Phoebus, lord of lore and light ; 
In wastes and wilds, by fount and caverned hill, 
Secretly, furtively, are worshipped still. 
With the sad zeal of vainly pious knees. 
The ancient, the deposed divinities. 
Heaven's outcasts, the great exiles of the sky, 
Once mighty to do all things, save to die. 

So, though in kingdoms of the Lyre to-day 

I see the new faiths push the old away — 

19 



20 THE MOSSGROWN PORCHES 

See the hot hierophants of each strange shrine 

Offer oblation to all gods but mine, 

And proudliest build their sanctuary and home 

Where broods, on England's Tiber, England's 

Rome; 
Yet, mid a revel of change, unchanged I turn 
To the lorn haunt's where older altars burn, — ■ 
There seek, companioned by the lessening few 
Whose faith is as mine own, the gods I knew ; 
Seek in deep clefts, and hushed in forests find, 
The far- withdrawn Olympians of the mind, 
Nor ever doubt, that among wondering men 
These deathless will in triumph come again, 
As sure as the droop'd year's remounting curve, 
And reign anew, when I no more shall serve. 



THE SEXES OF SONG 

First in the empire of the Muse 
Are the broad athletes, the all-male, 

Who from their cradles had the thews 
That unwithstandably prevail. 

But many a province she possesses, 
Rich in fair manors and proud seats. 

Bestowed on such great poetesses 
As Shelley and June-hearted Keats. 



21 



THE HUSBANDMAN OF HEAVEN 

[Lines written near the burial-place of Burns] 

Poet, whose very dust, here shed. 
Is as the quick among the dead. 
Where revels thy carousing soul? 
What Hebe fills what mighty bowl. 
Mantling with what immortal drink? 
***** 

Nay, great and blissful one! I think 
That, taught by Time himself to flee 
The taverns of Eternity, 
Amid yon constellations thou 
Drivest all night the heavenly Plough, 
Wooing with song some sky-nymph fair 



THE HUSBANDMAN OF HEAVEN 23 

Who sits in Cassiopeia's Chair, 
Or half unravels on her knees 
That tangled net, the Pleiades, 
Or, at thy over amorous strain 
Bridling with wrath she needs must feign, 
Flits to a region pale and gray, 
Shimmers through nebula away, 
Coldly beyond thy fires to roam, 
Hid in Orion's astral foam. 
But wandering back, with starlike tears 
Yields to the Ploughman of the Spheres. 



SHAKESPEARE 

O LET me leave the plains behind, 
And let me leave the vales below ! 

Into the highlands of the mind, 
Into the mountains let me go. 

My Keats, my Spenser, loved I well; 

Gardens and statued lawns were these; 
Yet not for ever could I dwell 

In arbours and in pleasances. 

Here are the heights, crest beyond crest, 

With Himalayan dews impearled; 

And I will watch from Everest 

The long heave of the surging world. 
?4 



TRADITION IN ART AND LETTERS 

She guards, not binds; coerces not, but shields; 

And o'er this proud though httle land of Me, 
Not an immediate goverance she wields, 

But a Protectorate and a Suzerainty. 

Within her ambience, fetterless I dwell, 

Under the still monition of her eye. 
Not my custodian she, but sentinel, 

And less a bound or barrier than a sky. 

Therefore I keep, or strive to keep, her law. 

While some break from her with insurgence rude ; 

And as for these, when I looked forth and saw 
Their liberty, then chose I servitude, 

2$ 



NATURE'S WAY 

"Faultily faultless" may be ill — 

"Carefully careless" is worse still. 

I bought one day a book of rhyme — 

One long, fierce flout at tune and time ; 

Ragged and jagged by intent, 

As if each line were earthquake-rent; 

Leagues on seismal leagues of it, 

Not unheroically writ, 

By one of whom I had been told 

That he, in scorn of canons old, 

Pedantic laws effete and dead, 

Went fearless to the pure well-head 

Of song's most ancient legislature — 
26 



NATURE'S WAY 27 

Art's uncorrupted mother, Nature. 

Nature ! whose lapidary seas 
Labour a pebble without ease, 
Till they unto perfection bring 
That miracle of polishing; 
Who never negligently yet 
Fashioned an April violet, 
Nor would forgive, did June disclose 
Unceremoniously the rose; 
Who makes the toadstool in the grass 
The carven ivory surpass. 
So guiltless of a fault or slip 
Is its victorious workmanship; 
Who suffers us pure Form to see 
In a dead leaf's anatomy; 
And pondering long where greenly sleep 
The unravished secrets of the deep, 



28 NATURE'S WAY 

Bids the all-courted pearl express 
Her final thoughts on flawlessness; 
But visibly aches when doomed to bring 
Some inchoate amorphous thing. 
Loathed by its very mother for 
The unfinish she doth most abhor, 
Into a world her curious wit 
Would fain have shaped all-exquisite 
As the acorn cup's simplicity, 
Or the Moon's patience with the sea, 
Or the superb, the golden grief 
Of each October for each leaf. 
Phrased in a rhetoric that excels 
Isaiah's and Ezekiel's. 



ON A CAROLINE POET 

This lord of a romantic wit 
Was subtle without knowing it; 
For Subtlety expires in air 
If of herself she grow aware. 

Oft with a reveller's gait did he 
Stagger into profundity; 
As mariners that chartless rove 
May drift on isles of treasure-trove. 



29 



ART'S RIDDLE 

Go to ; I also would her skein unravel. 

Art is not Nature warped in man's control, 
But Nature's reminiscences of travel 

Across an artist's soul. 

Or 'tis a tidal river, that, each day, 
Ebbing and flowing under cliff and tree, 

With mutual and eternal interplay 
Takes and gives back the sea. 



30 



TO A STRENUOUS CRITIC 

You scorn as idle — 'you who praise 
Each posturing hero of the herd — 

The lofty bearing of a phrase, 

The noble countenance of a word. 

"This has no import for the age!" 

And so your votive wreaths you heap 

On him who brought unto our Stage 
A mightier dulness o'er the deep. 

Great Heaven! When these with clamour shrill 

Drift out to Lethe's harbour bar, 

A verse of Lovelace shall be still 

As vivid as a pulsing star. 
31 



TO 

At first I almost thought that your fine gift, 

Your noble genius for depreciation, 
Had given a happy and a timely lift 

To poor old Shakespeare's tottering reputation. 

But much I doubt, reading once more his page, 
Whether such proud advertisement it needed! 

No, — 'twill be sweet when you have reached a stage 
By ripeness oft preceded. 



32 



TO A LITERARY CLERIC 

I WOULD not have you scorn archdeaconships, 

Or comfortable deaneries refuse; 
Yet should I mourn, did these things quite eclipse 

Your mild and worthy Muse. 

Nor shall I watch incurious your career ; 

For though your heart on things above be set, 
You lack not gifts such as avail us here, 

And may reach Lambeth yet. 



33 



THE BALLAD OF THE BOOTMAKER 

[A Fable for Poets] 

I WENT into a bootmaker's, 

A pair of boots to buy. 
Upon the morrow morn those boots 

Let in the rain and sky. 

Then to the bootman I returned, 

And cold, cold were my feet; 
But my vocabulary was 

Of equatorial heat. 

" 'Tis true," quoth he, "the boots you bought 

Are palpably a pair 
Not made for such ignoble ends 

As vulgar use and wear. 

34 



THE BALLAD OF THE BOOTMAKER 35 

"Rather have they been fashioned forth 

By one who did disdain 
The shallow art of making boots 

That will keep out the rain. 

"His loftier dream is to conceive 

A boot that sets no bars 
To the free ingress of the heavens 

And visits of the stars. 

"In his impassioned bootmanship 

Foiled gropings are discerned 
Toward some visionary boot 

For which the ages yearned. 

"His baffled flight, his broken wing, 

His heart-cry and his pain, 
Are worth a million perfect boots 

That will keep out the rain." 



36 THE BALLAD OF THE BOOTMAKER 

"Your words," said I, "are passing fine. 

But let my boots be made 
By handicraftsmen who were not 

Too great to learn their trade. 

"The thirst for the Infinitudes 

Will scarce with me atone 
For upper leathers badly botched 

And soles as badly sewn. 

"I cannot rate his bootcraft high 

Who principally lives 
To obliterate the differences 

Observed 'twixt boots and sieves. 

"Not that I would on Art's free spirit 

A deadening yoke impose ! 
Let boots express the bootmaker 

And all he feels and knows. 



THE BALLAD OF THE BOOTMAKER 37 

" 'Tis meet, 'tis well ! But I shall yet 

For evermore retain 
My old, my early love of boots . 

That will keep out the rain." 

With that I doffed the boots I loathed, 

And nought besides did say. 
But heaved them at the bootster's head 

And bootless went my way. 

To muse upon a universe 

That seemed, when I was young, 

A place where boots were better made, 
And songs were better sung. 



THE GIANTS AND THE ELVES 

It is enough to make 

Laughter, or tears, gush from the stone, 

When, in an island where, 

On meadow and copse, could break 

Chaucer, that other April ; where alone 

Earth could conceive and bear 

Shakespeare; where Milton reigned on awesome 

throne. 

And Dryden governed from more mundane chair ; 

All perfect masters of their perfect tools, 

And royally skilled to take 

From each its utmost yield of service fair; 

I am put off with posturing fools 

Who in such presences cackle all day of Blake. 

38 



THE YAPPING CUR 

I WAS walking in the sun, my day's work done, 
And the great world rolled like a wheel, 

When a cur came yapping, came yap-yap-yapping, 
When a cur came yapping at my heel. 

Along the pleasant way where the little folk play. 
Past the church, where the grown folk kneel, 

The tiresome, monotonous, interminable yapping, 
The yapping of the cur at my heel! 

Were he hungry I would feed him at my cot hard 

by, 

Where are hearts that have hungred and can feel. 
39 



40 THE YAPPING CUR 

He is fed as well as I am, and housed as well as I, 
And his pastime is yapping at one's heel. 

Shall I send him all asprawl from my good stout 
shoe, 
Turn his yapping to a yelping and a squeal? 
Nay, leave him to the thing Fate fashioned him to 
do— 
His dog's-work of yapping at one's heel. 

For God made the arrows that around life whirr, 
And the thunders that above life peal, 

And He made, too, the miserable, mangy little cur, 
And its instinct for yapping at one's heel. 



THE SURPRISE 

They thought they had left him lying well-nigh 

dead, 
So many javelins had been cast at him, 
So many dinting blows 
Upon his casque and cataphract had rung, 
So many stones had with shrill whirr been slung. 
But whole of heart and limb, 
At daydroop he uplifted his prone head, 
Propped him upon an elbow — suddenly rose — 
Woke his lulled sword and the vain scabbard shed, 
Struck out at all his foes, 
And got him victory ere the day was sped. 



41 



ON A TOO PROLIFIC ESSAYIST 

The cruellest torture that a man can know, 
Passing all Torquemada's racks, is said 

To be the ceaseless, measured, leisured, slow 
Drip-drop of water on the victim's head. 

Surely it were a torment like in kind, 
If in degree less maddening, to sit still 

Under the leakage of this good man's mind, 
The eternal trickle of this blameless quill. 



43 



STAGGERALL 

**What, a new Milton ? But I've seen 
So many sail the sether keen, 
Orbed like the haloed summer moon, 
To drop like the collapsed balloon." 

"Too true ! But not as these, shall fall 
The incomparable Staggerall! 
Counterfeits they, wound up to sing ; 
He, the divine authentic thing." 

"Then laud and love him — and to-day 
Let him enjoy what fame he may. 
But do not, 'neath to-morrow's sky, 
Stone him with stones until he die." 

43 



THE ADJECTIVE 
Look not too coldly or too proudly down 
On this poor bondslave to a haughty Noun! 
Oft in his wallet hath he carried all 
His master's wealth. Oft hath this captive thrall, 
Marching before his lord with herald's blast, 
Won him salaams who else had noteless passed. 



44 



WHO CAN TELL? 

The Celtic Twilight? Yes, 
Follow the beckon of its fairy moon! 
But wherefore chide me if I love not less 
The Saxon Noon? 

Ah, what if Time should breathe 

On both the same cold edict of decay, 

And with the sole unwithering garland wreathe 

The Hellenic Day? 



45 



MASTERY 

With little learning — hardly more 

Than bids me envy others' lore — 

Great faith have I in laws of song, 

In truths of lyric right and wrong, 

As seen from the Acropolis! 

As seen in times that unto this 

Were what the woof of radiant air 

Cephissus and Ilissus wear 

Is to the marsh-bred murk unclean 

That drapes the uncleaner Thames; — as seen 

By those who knew how vain is mere 

Delirious clutch at star and sphere, 

And taught not that Intention high 
46 



MASTERY 47 

Lifts Unachievement to the sky, 
Or that to fail can e'er be great ; 
Who had scant tears for Marsyas' fate ; 
And wasted not their strength of wing 
In desperately challenging 
Battlements inaccessible 
As the eyrie whence Hephaestus fell. 

For the brave tourneys of the lyre 
Are won by prowess, not desire, 
And Art is capture, not pursuit, 
Capture and conquest absolute, 
Bliss of possession without bar; 
And they the trophied hunters are 
Who from their cloudless brows efface 
The last motes of the dust of chase, 
That Time may on their foreheads see 
Nought of the strife save Victory. 



48 MASTERY 

The steeds of Helios will obey 
None other than the lord of day. 
They bear, delighted, the command 
Of his inexorable hand; 
But if a meddler take the reins, 
They rear, they toss their flaming manes, 
Crash backward, or break loose anon, 
In boundless scorn of Phaethon. 



THE DIFFERENCE 

Greece, in those feats and contests hard, 
Sung by the billowy Theban bard. 
Kept her fair body sound and whole, 
Yet also trimmed that lamp, her soul. 

No lordly Pindar now acclaims. 
At Life's Nemean or Pythian games, 
The strength, the swiftness, and the grace, 
That win the eternal chariot-race. 

We have the shouts, the applause, the throng. 

But Hellas, Hellas had the song! 1, 

She loved the clash of godlike play, 

But it was song that crowned the day. 
49 



THOMAS HOOD 

No courtier this, and nought to courts he owed, 
Fawned not on thrones, hymned not the great 
and callous. 

Yet, in one strain, that few remember, showed 
He had the password to King Oberon's palace. 

And seeing a London seamstress's grey fate. 
He of a human heartstring made a thread, 

And stitched him such a royal robe of state 
That Eastern Kings are poorlier habited. 

He saw wan Woman toil with famished eyes; 

He saw her bound, and strove to sing her free. 
50 



THOMAS HOOD 51 

He saw her fall'n; and wrote "The Bridge of 
Sighs"; 
And on it crossed to immortality. 



CONFIDENCE 

When criticasters of a day- 
Seem to have sneered me quite away; 
When with a pontiff's frown 
Some dabbler puts me down; 

When up from out the nursery start 
Sages to teach me mine own art — 
Guides in that field my share 
Ploughed long before they were; 

When gusts of fashion brief as vain 
Sow wide a tasteless taste inane ; 
When Folly, night and morn, 
Scatters on me her scorn; 

52 



CONFIDENCE 53 

When they who could bestow, refuse 
With deathless spite the admitted dues ; 

When slanderous lips aver 

I am the slanderer ; 

Then, draining mine appointed cup. 
In patience do I gird me up, 

Knowing that Time, one day, 

All his arrears will pay. 



ON MILTON'S USE OF THE SONNET 

A HUNDRED Poets bend proud necks to bear 
This yoke, this bondage. He alone could don 

His badges of subjection with the air 
Of one who puts a King's regalia on. 



54 



A WISE PRECEPT 

How oft to-day his words appear forgot, 
Who bade us, in rich tones, of far vibration, 

To decorate the thing we build, but not 
Build decoration! 



SS 



OVER-VIGILANCE 

You shun the style that makes one blink 
With its too scintillating ray? 

From no such perils do I think 

Your readers need be warned away. 



56 



TO A SKILLED VERSEMAKER 

In rhyme you tell your tale, at mickle cost! 

With better thrift, in prose, the task were done. 
For what is here achieved ? — A novel lost, 

And not a poem won. 



57 



ON A PEOPLE'S POET 

Threadbare his songs seem now, to lettered ken : 
They were worn threadbare next the hearts of men. 



58 



ON A DECEASED AUTHOR 

The smell o' th' lamp's o'er all his toil? 
Yes — and such damnably bad oil. 



59 



LOVES AND HATES 

I LOVE the poet of cloudless ray; 

Love, too, the folded, golden vapour; 
But hate the humbug who all day 

Serves up deliberate fog on paper. 



60 



THE WIZARD'S WAND 

Sir Bigwig Windbag, dull, diffuse, and drear, 
Proses on poets from his rostrum high. 

O Hippocrene, what miracle is here? 
Thy very water at his touch seems dry. 



6i 



TO A VINTNER OF PARNASSUS 

Wine, to be worth the name, must needs have one 
Of two good things — body or bouquet. Either 

Will help it down a willing throat to run ; 
But the vast wash you pour as from the tun 
Has neither. 



62 



COKE UPON LITTLETON 

[Mr. T. W. Littleton Hay wrote to the Saturday 
Review as follows : "Many of us . . . would l>e 
glad if you would raise your powerful voice to stop 
William Watson."] 

O wherefore squander thus 

Your breath away? 
Think you that Pegasus 

Will stop for Hay ? 



63 



II 

POEMS PERSONAL AND 
GENERAL 



THE ETERNAL SEARCH 

My little maiden two years old, just able 

To tower full half a head above the table, 

With inquisition keen must needs explore 

Whatever in my dwelling hath a door. 

Whatever is behind a curtain hid. 

Or lurks, a rich enigma, 'neath a lid. 

So soon is the supreme desire confessed, 

To probe the unknown ! So soon begins the quest, 

That never ends until asunder fall 

The locks and bolts of the last door of all. 



67 



RAPTURE 

Out of the east wind, making gray 
The face of the dejected day, 
I stept into a minster, where 
Aisles of praise and towers of prayer, 
Fencing me from all the strife 
Of this illegible, blurred life, 
Took and folded up and furled 
The undecipherable world. 

And there it seemed that I forgot 

All I would fain remember not; 

Folly's works by fools adored; 

The senseless gun, the soulless sword. 
68 



RAPTURE 69 

And through the flushed and jewelled gloom 
That rubied some Crusader's tomb, 
There rose and rolled a golden wave, 
That, thundering down the cloudy nave, 
Ravishingly with violence sweet 
Stormed the earth from 'neath my feet, 
Swept me as a leaf abroad 
In great tides of billowing laud, 
Leaving me at last afar, 
Derelict on an island star, : 

Ruthlessly and blissfully 
Cast up as jetsam of the sea 
That visits with all-linking flow 
Each heavenly archipelago. 



TO A VIOLONCELLO 

Well, O 'Cello, love I all thy mellow 

Deeps of golden sound! 

Tell, O 'Cello, tell me where thy fellow 

May on earth be found? 

Or, if such be past our finding here, 

In what sphere 

That brooks no galling bound. 

Far beyond the light wherein thou dwellest, 

What immortal, what celestial 'Cellist 

Wields the bow that bids the world go round? 



70 



HER THIRD BIRTHDAY 

My tiny lady, can It 
Be true that you and I, 

On something called a planet, 
Are somewhere in the sky? 

Yes — and at such a tearing 
And madcap speed we've spun, 

That you, with dreadful daring, 
Have thrice been round the sun. 

Nay, it yet more amazes. 

That my far-venturing girl 

Can be as fresh as daisies 

After so wild a whirl! 
71 



^2 HER THIRD BIRTHDAY 

And now 'neath western billow 

The sun is put to bed, 
And you, too, on your pillow 

Must lay a golden head. 

Ah, tears — they come so quickly, 
For grief so quickly gone ! 

Yet joys have rained as thickly, 
For you to dream upon. 



DISCLOSURE 

We dwelt by western shores, and there, 
Watching a hill that watched the wave, 

We called him dull in pose and air, 
A bulk not grand but merely grave — 

So many mountains had we seen, 

Kingly of build and port and mien. 

Then came a snowstorm in the night. 
And all his ribs of rock, next morn, 

All his anatomy, sprang to light, 

With form and feature, carved and worn. 

That rose out of the sea's abyss 

Magnificent in emphasis. 
7Z 



74 DISCLOSURE 

Imagine not that thou canst know 

Mountains or men in very truth, 
Until the tempest and the snow 

Strike them at midnight without ruth, 
And pubhsh clear, in morning's gaze, 
The lineaments they strove to erase. 



EDENHUNGER 

O THAT a nest, my mate! were once more ours, 
Where we, by vain and barren change untor- 
tured, 
Could have grave friendships with wise trees and 
flowers, 
And Hve the great, green life of field and or- 
chard ! 

From the cold birthday of the daffodils, 

Ev'n to that listening pause that is November, 

O to confide in woods, confer with hills, 

And then — then, to that palmland you remember, 

75 



76 EDENHUNGER 

Fly swift, where seas that brook not Winter's rule 

Are one vast violet breaking into lilies : 
There where we spent our first strange wedded 
Yule, 

In the far, golden, fire-hearted Antilles. 



, THE BETTER CHOICE 

The wintry sun is a miser, 

Whose joy is to hoard and hold; 

But the summer sun is wiser — 

He freely spends his gold. 

a 
With lavish and broad dispersal, 

Around and beneath and above, 

He sows his wealth universal, 



And reaps universal love. J 



77 



TO MY ELDEST CHILD 

My little firstborn daughter sweet — 
My child, yet half of alien race — 

England and Ireland surely meet, 
Their feuds forgotten, in thy face. 

To both these lands I'd have thee give 
Thy maiden heart, surrendered free; 

For both alike I'd have thee live, 
Since both alike do live in thee. 

In thee they lay their strife aside. 

That were so worn with dire unrest; 

These whom the waters parted wide, 

But who commingle in thy breast. 
78 



TO MY ELDEST CHILD 79 

These will I teach thee to revere, 

To love, and serve, and understand ; 
Nor chide thee if thou hold more dear 

Thy mother's than thy father's land. 

The English fields, in sun and rain. 
Were round about thee at thy birth ; 

But thou shalt ache with Ireland's pain, 
And thou shalt laugh with Ireland's mirth. 

Thou shalt be taught her noble songs, 
And thou shalt grieve whene'er is told 

The story of her ancient wrongs. 
The story of her sorrows old. 

And often, in thy English home, 
Her voice will call, and thou obey. 

Thy heart will cross the sundering foam. 
Thy soul to Ireland sail away. 



8o TO MY ELDEST CHILD 

Ah, little flower ! in Irish ground 

Thy roots are deeper than the sea, 
Though English woodlands murmured round 

The house of thy nativity. 

Of both these peoples thou werj; born; 

Of both these lands thou art the child; 
A symbol of the radiant morn 

That shall behold them reconciled. 



TO THE HON. STEPHEN COLERIDGE 

[On his Labours in Mitigation of Animal Suffering] 

Swordsman of Mercy, merciless to these 
Who feign that the All-Maker gladly sees 

His lowlier creatures racked and riven while man 
Buys with their agony a dreadful ease ; 

Not uncompanioned fight you this good fight : 
Lords of invisible but invincible might, 
The poets all are with you evermore, 
Marching like morn upon the camps of Night. 

They watch you 'twixt the cheers and jeers of men, 

Grappling with cruelty in the dragon's den; 

I say they all are with you from of old, 

Partisans of that dauntless sword, your pen. 

8i 



82 TO THE HON. STEPHEN COLERIDGE 

Dark are the times ; Death feasts with bloody jaws ; 
When ruth is prone in dust, who heeds your cause ? 
Yet fight, and faint not; still the stars look on; 
And poets acclaim, and Shakespeare leads the ap- 
plause. 

No wonder! For the ancient legends say — 
Telling great truth in the great Grecian way — 

That horsed on Pegasus was Bellerophon, 
When he with joy did the Chimasra slay. 



AN INSOLUBLE PROBLEM 

Rhona, as yet a tiny mite 
Not three years old, looked up to-night 
At the resplendent heavens, and said : 
"What are 'ose 'tars for?" 

Little maid, 
I cannot tell, I ne'er have known — ■ 
Not being God upon His throne. 



83 



ON A LITTLE GIFT TO A LITTLE CHILD 

Brought hither from the city of the Rood, 
It speaks, to Innocence without a spot, 

Of one who bade that httle children should 
Come unto Him and be forbidden not. 



THE PRODIGY 

1915 

When Kings reeled to their fall, or Pestilence 

poured 

Her chalice, or wan Famine claimed her slain, 

Dread comets ploughed of old the ethereal plain, 

The Hirsute Star loosing his locks abhorred. 

Fierce shapes he took; a bristled monster, gored 

With porcine tusk the cold-bosomed Inane ; 

Flowed on the neck of Night, a charger's name; 

Or brandished in the zenith a hungry sword. 

Now, once again, the buccaneer of Heaven, 

Yonder he cruises by its northern coasts. 

And there shall trail his wake of bodeful foam, 

8s 



86 THE PRODIGY 

Till, from that region hunted wide, and driven 
Before its fleets and all their armoured hosts, 
In deeps unknown the starry Ishmael roam. 



UNINHABITED 

Behold a sapless husk, in name a man, 
That never shook with laughter at a jest, 
Or flashed in anger at a hateful deed, 
Or loved a woman, or sinned a headlong sin ! 
In two score years grown old and moribund, 
His lean soul, arid as the childless sands, 
Crumbles, and dustily disintegrates. 
Dies piecemeal, less lamented than a tree. 

It is not the well-warmed, well-peopled house 

That soonest falls to wrack. 'Tis the disused 

And empty dwelling, that with fireless hearth, 

Pictureless walls, and shuttered window panes, 

Coldly, untimely mopes into decay. 
87 



VALEDICTORY 

Adieu, gray hamlet — hall and cot, 

And ivied steeple! 
You would be such a pleasant spot 

But for the people. 



88 



TO A SUCCESSFUL MAN 

Yes, titles, and emoluments, and place, 
All tell the world that you have won life's race. 
But then, 'twas your good fortune not to start 
Handicapped with a conscience or a heart. 



WHAT SCIENCE SAYS TO TRUTH 

As is the mainland to the sea, 

Thou art to me; 

Thou standest stable, while against thy feet 

I beat, I beat! 

Yet from thy cliflfs so sheer, so tall, 
Sands crumble and fall ; 
And golden grains of thee my tides each day 
Carry away. 



90 



THE PEER'S PROGRESS 

[Verses on reading that Lord Aberdeen was about to be made 
Marquess of Aberdeen and Tara] 

Tara, the place of Kings, the hill of Fate — 

Tara, the throne of Song, the hallowed shrine — 

Tagged as a tassel to your marquessate, 

Made an appurtenance of your house and line! 

Who cares though you were marquess ten times 
o'er? 

Bemarquess'd or beduked — who cares a straw ? 
But linked with Erin's immemorial lore, 

Her memories sacrosanct, her mount of awe! 

Nay, why so modest, why so humble — why 

Pause, in your too meek flight, on Tara Hill ? 
91 



92 THE PEER'S PROGRESS 

"Marquess of Aberdeen and Sinai"' — 
Consider! — were not this ev'n better still? 

God made me English — English through and 
through — 

But, bound to Ireland by one bond supreme, 
I know her soul — something unknown to you — 

Her vision and her passion and her dream. 

I know, as all know who have breathed her air. 
How transient, how unrooted in her heart — 

A mere ephemeral thing of passage there — 
Were you, that in her glories claim a part. 

And this last insult before gazing men — 
This ignominy the bitterest yet by far — 

She will remember and forgive not, when 
You in Time's volume an erasure are. 



THE PEER'S PROGRESS 93 

You, soon enough, will be by her forgot ; 

Lodged in some suburb of her thoughts were 
you; 
But this will as a proverb live, of what 

Dull, sightless, soulless statesmanship can do. 

This profanation, blind and coarse and crude, 
Of things the holiest held, from sea to sea, 

This is immortal as Ineptitude, 
This is eternal as Stupidity. 

And ev'n to this, from all the ages past. 

Through all the long self-torturing, Ireland came; 

Left to her disillusions at the last, 

And Tara fall'n — a pendant to your name.* 

* The distinguished nobleman chose afterwards another title 
in lieu of the one at first contemplated. 



A FAMILIAR EPISTLE 

To Dr. Oliver Gogarty of Dublin 
(Written in Scotland at Yuletide) 

Oliver Gogarty me boy, 

While trumpets sound and troops deploy, 

Our once cool Castaly the Kaiser 

Transforms into a very Geyser; 

And overhung with war-cloud pluvious, 

Parnassus' peaks outflame Vesuvius. 

But more than peaceful is the line 

I pen to you across the brine ; 

This somewhat overdue epistle, 

Writ in the Kingdom of the Thistle, 

To speed at daybreak, west by south, 
94 



A FAMILIAR EPISTLE 95 

From lean Loch Ryan's snarling mouth, 
To Shamrock-land that gave ye birth — ' 
The least "disthressful" land on earth. 

Three Olivers before your time 

Were not unknown in prose and rhyme. 

One was the paladin — or pal — 

Of him who fought at Roncesvalles, 

And one gave Drogheda to pillage, 

And one wrote "The Deserted Village" ; 

But sorra an Oliver ever seen 

Compares with him of Stephen's Green, 

And from this frosty, fiery North 

I hail you Oliver the Fourth. 

How goes it yonder? Very soon 

St. Patrick's bell will toll Night's noon. 

And a convivial Dublin moon 

Be gazing down with bibulous leer 



96 A FAMILIAR EPISTLE 

On Trinity's fagade severe. 
But ere I sleep, one wakeful word 
Clamours to be no more deferred : 
When, when, I pray you, shall we twain 
Forgather to discourse again 
Of things the world holds cheap, and we 
Rate above rubies? If the sea 
And sky in their most iron mood 
Daunt not at all your hardihood, 
What of adventuring hither, while 
Throughout this blanched and shivering isle 
The Heav'ns grip fast as in a vice 
The Earth's hands manacled with ice, 
And drop not even a frozen tear 
On the cold deathbed of the Year? 
Our talk shall not be all of trenches, 
Falkenhayn's strategy, or French's : 



A FAMILIAR EPISTLE 97 

Rather of matters built to abide 

When the last din of war has died; 

Art, Thought, and Song — the unageing themes — 

And those sole verities, our dreams. 

But come or not, whichever suit you, 

The Muse shall cordially salute you, 

For Irishman with heart more true 

Ne'er claimed descent from Brian Boru, 

(Which sons of Erin mostly do) — 

Nor ever in the days of old. 

When Malachy wore the collar of gold. 

Or Ulster parried Munster's blows 

While Leinster pummelled Connaught's nose, 

Lived the full life of feast and fast, 

And found it goodly to the last. 

Thus vows, with attestation fervent, 

Your faithful friend — a fellow servant 



98 A FAMILIAR EPISTLE 

Of those nine Ladies of the Height, 
Who, with large promises, invite 
Their lovers to their bower above, 
And make a football of our love, 
Toy with the troth that never wavers. 
And sell so dear their fatal favours. 



